Images of women stringing together flowers, deities wearing garlands, women wearing strings of flowers in their hair, flowers braided with leaves, flowers strung with flowers - the many forms of floral garlands dominate designer Sreejith Jeevan’s mood board. These were inspiration for his collection, ‘Strung Together’, for the Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) scheduled to start next week at Mumbai. This will be his label Rouka’s second outing at LFW, on August 21.
The pictures came later, the seeds of inspiration were sown by writer Shobha Narayan. “It was something she wrote about garlands and it inspired me to look at garlands differently. At a time when everywhere else in the world handmade is considered to be of more value, we tend to consider handmade low-end.”
Shobha wrote an article about looking for a bouquet of exotic flowers in flower shop after flower shop, finding handmade marigold garlands and still looking for the bouquet. She asks, “Why am I harking for a bouquet when stringing flowers together is the Indian way?” And goes on to suggest an alternative “rather than buying those obligatory long-stemmed red roses, why not braid some intoxicating Madurai jasmine in your hair instead? Instead of dazzling her with a bouquet, caress her with a rose garland instead?”
These words led him to mine his experience of life in Kochi, a city with many temples; of his time in Karur where the focus of social life was the temple with its flowers, poojas and kutcheris .
These factors in the background are the genesis of ‘Strung Together’; “the collection is a tribute to hundreds of people and their hand-skills. To Rouka, it is an analogy between the work of a garland maker and a designer, in bringing people together by what we do. An Indian garland is much more sensuous for its handmade value, than a tied-together bouquet,” Sreejith says as he shows the collection which is getting readied. He likes to work with cultural references he can relate to, “I don’t know the Renaissance or the Industrial revolution to be inspired by. But I do know this theme.”
Last season (Spring Resort) Sreejith showed his collection at the fashion week under the GenNext category of designers and this time round (Winter Festive) as an emerging designer in that category.
The Kochi-based National Institute of Design-trained designer launched his label, Rouka, in Kochi and set up his eponymous store here a couple of months ago. Today he retails from stores such as Ensemble, Collage, Amethyst, and Fuel across cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Chennai. His CV includes design education in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs, working with Ikea India and also with designer Rajesh Pratap Singh for a season.
His training as a textile designer shows in this collection, fabric to be as much as a part of the story as is the treatment – be it embroidery, design detail or silhouette. This collection, he says, may be inspired by temple towns and Carnatic music but “it is quirky-modern. Not too traditional,” and he walks the tightrope with ease.
The story comes through with interesting design details and styles – kimono cuts, asymmetrical patterns, jackets, skirts, palazzo pants, jackets, culottes, tunic and dresses which can be co-ordinated for a woman “who multitasks with her clothes.” Silk-cotton, linen, cotton-linen, and silk and the palette is black, white, red, pink, green, grey and ivory – the ‘garland’ colours and those for the season. The garland palette is such that the whole country can relate to and yes, he has consciously left out yellow which has been overdone.
“The clothes articulate the art of stringing, with garland-like collars, strung together seams and threaded flower patterns,” he says. The detailing is, indeed, quirky. If he visually communicates through illustrative embroideries like the flower seller motif, then there is the suggestive cowl neck with a sprinkling of embroidered jasmine flowers or a tunic with garland detailing stringing detail where on pulling the strings the embroidery bunches up to form ‘a string of flowers’. Each garment is a story. The minimalist, no fuss garments embody “the Rouka identity is a simple minimal. Simple clothing made dramatic by the way it is worn,” Sreejith says.
